1
CITATIONS
[selected quotations in boldface entries]
• Recondite Harmony: Essays on Puccini’s Operas (monograph)
6d1: Pollaci, Marco. Review: “Recondite Harmony: the first analytic investigation of the operas of Giacomo
Puccini, between tradition and modernity.” Lyrica: Opera e Dintorni XIX/6 (2012): 26-27.
“One of the most important scholars of Italian opera has dealt with a subject that has divided critics for a long time:
the operas of the great Tuscan composer. Her book Recondite harmony : essays on Puccini’s operas, finally responds to a
query debated among many opera lovers: is Giacomo Puccini a musician tied to the operatic traditions of the 19th
century or do his masterworks show elements of innovations by Wagner or the modern composers of Puccini’s time?
Deborah Burton supplies the answer to this question in a new analytic light. Her book is a truly analytic investigation
that examines Puccini’s works with an approach that deals with new and original research on the music of one of the
greatest Italian opera composers.
Burton’s contributions in musicology and in Puccini studies have always been notable. Pianist, musicologist and
professor in several American universities, Burton has published in many journals, including Studi Musicali, the Nuova
Rivista Musicale, Opera Quarterly, the Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale, and she has collaborated (as author and co-editor),
together with other important scholars such as Julian Budden and Giorgio Sanguinetti, on the text Tosca's prism: three
moment of western cultural history. In December 2010, for the centenar of La fanciulla del West, she created a website
www.fanciulla100.org and partcipated in numerous conferences dedicated to the opera composer from Lucca. Puccini
and Italian opera have always been part of this scholar’s musical and musicological activities, who has now published
this very interesting analytic work. Many texts have been written on Giacomo Puccini, on his life and on his works, but
too often the analytic aspect of his operas—which are among the most performed in the world—has been put aside.
The author observes the harmonic structure of Puccini’s musical language and her great competence in the field of
music analysis contributes to clarifying many aspects of these masterworks.
Recondite harmony explores the numerous unknowns that constituent Puccinian structures, at times complex, contain
inside their compositional framework. The book offers notable contributions to many elements, until now
unexplored, of the Lucchese composer’s operas. And the author examines not only the Wagnerian and Modernist
musical influences on Puccini’s operas, but also the specific elements of his musical palette, in order to probe the
contents of both his extraordinary harmonic vocabulary and his compositional procedures.
Deborah Burton supplies numerous musical examples that help in understanding the fascinating analyses of the
Puccini’s operatic scores. Deborah Burton’s text represents years of research on Italian opera and on the work of
Giacomo Puccini, and, since November opera scholars have been able to read one of the latest most original
contributions on the operas of the ingenious Tuscan composer. The book demonstrates how an analytic approach can
focus on opera, and this study represents a notable contribution to the musicological and operatic worlds.” [please see
supporting documents for Italian original.]
• The Theoretical-Practical Elements of Music (annotated translation)
6d2. Cohn, Richard. Audacious Euphony: Chromatic Harmony and the Triad’s Second Nature. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2012.
- p. 5: “But there is another available interpretation: perhaps diatonic distance is not the best metric for the
situation at hand. In a treatise published in 1796, Francesco Galeazzi estimated the relationship between C major
and d minor triads as ‘very irregular and poor’ (irregolarissimo e pessimo), even though each has diatonic status when
the other is tonic (Galeazzi 1796, 264).5 [note 5:] “For an annotated translation of Galeazzi’s treatise, see Burton and
Harwood (forthcoming).”
• articles/chapters:
2
6d3. Ross, Alex. The New Yorker (29 October 2009)
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/alexross/2009/10/the-case-of-the-missing-candlesticks.html
[“Tosca Act II and the Secret Identity of F-sharp”]
[also see complete printout]
“A sidenote: I suspect that this passage in “Tosca” left its mark on Gustav Mahler. He first saw the opera in March
1903, and professed to hate it. “Nowadays every shoemaker’s apprentice is an orchestrator of genius,” he snapped
in a letter to Alma. That summer, he began work on his Sixth Symphony, whose premiere took place in Essen in
1906. Here is the famous shock ending of the symphony (with John Barbirolli conducting the New Philharmonia,
EMI 65285):
It’s not an open-and-shut case of creative borrowing, but the resemblance is striking.
So why doesn’t the act end in E minor, in a deathly fade-out á la Mahler? Why this sudden, strange, almost arbitrary
move to F-sharp minor? Another “Tosca” volume, “Tosca’s Prism,” edited by Nicassio, Deborah Burton, and the
excellently named Agostino Ziino, supplies two possible answers. Burton, in an essay titled “‘Tosca’ Act II and the
Secret Identity of F-sharp,” suggests that Puccini is in essence rewinding the act to its beginning, to the opening
gesture of F-sharp, E, and D. Such hidden symmetry is typical of Puccini’s craftsmanship as a composer.”
6d4. Baragwanath, Nicholas. The Italian Traditions & Puccini: Compositional Theory & Practice.
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011. [“Michele Puccini’s Counterpont Treatise”]
- p. 35: “Analyses by Deborah Burton, Michele Girardi, and Helen Greenwald have set out to demonstrate the
operation of tonal and motivic structures over long stretches of the operas, complemented by dramatic associative
meaning.”
- p. 315, note 10. “For information on the Puccini family library, see Burton (1996, 173–86)”
- p. 319, note 21. “Antonio Puccini’s “Repertorio di musica del Puccini” of 1818 is currently
held in the Biblioteca dell’Istituto Musicale Luigi Boccherini, Fondo Puccini
O.IV.14. It is discussed in Guidotti (1990, 38) and Burton (1996).
- p. 335, note 66. “66. A full account of Puccini’s manuscript, currently held at the Museo Puccini in Celle
(Pescaglia), may be found in Burton (1996). It was bequeathed in 1864
to Carlo Angeloni, Michele’s student, who presumably made use of it when teaching the young Giacomo Puccini. It
remained in the Angeloni family until 1979, when
it was acquired by the Associazione Lucchesi nel Mondo. I am very grateful to Deborah Burton for providing me
with a photocopy of the manuscript.
6d5. Budden, Julian. Puccini: His Life and Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. [“Tristano, Tosca e Torchi”]
6d6. Davis, Andrew. Il Trittico, Turandot, and Puccini’s Late Style. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. [“Dawn
at Dusk” (program notes for Turandot at the Forbidden City, Beijing, 1998), “A Journey of Discovery”]
6d7. Fairtile, Linda. Giacomo Puccini: A Guide to Research (New York: Garland, 1999). [“A Select Bibliography,”
“Michele Puccini’s Counterpont Treatise,” “The Real Scarpia,” “The Creation of Tosca”]
6d8. Girardi, Michele. Giacomo Puccini: L’arte internazionale di un musicista italiano. Venice: Marsilio, 1995. English
translation with some revisions: Puccini: his Internatonal Art, trans. Laura Basini, Chicago: Chicago University Press,
2000. [“The Creation of Tosca,” “The Real Scarpia”]
6d9. Kleine-Ahlbrandt, William Laird. Tosca’s prism: three moments of western cultural history, edited by Deborah Burton,
Susan Vandiver Nicassio, Agostino Ziino, 94-113. [“The Real Scarpia”]
6d10. Phillips-Matz, Mary Jane. Puccini: a biography. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002. [“The Real
Scarpia,” “The Creation of Tosca”]
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6d11. Schickling, Dieter. “Fictional Reality: Literary and Musical Imagery in the Toscas of Sardou and Puccini.” In
Tosca’s prism: three moments of western cultural history, edited by Deborah Burton, Susan Vandiver Nicassio, Agostino Ziino,
121-134. [“The Real Scarpia” and “Possibili fonti storiche”]
6d12. Opera Stanford: http://opera.stanford.edu/Puccini/Tosca/backgd.html [“The Real Scarpia”]
6d13. Guy A Marco, Opera: a research and information guide, 2nd ed. (New York: Garland, 2001) [“The Real Scarpia,”
“Tristano, Tosca e Torchi”]
6d14. Ya-Hui Cheng, “The harmonic representation of the feminine in Puccini” (Ph.D. diss, Florida State University,
2008) [“A select bibliography”]
• Tosca’s Prism
6d15. Ross, Alex. The New Yorker, 29 October 2009.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/alexross/2009/10/the-case-of-the-missing-candlesticks.html
6d16. Marcia J. Citron, “The Operatics of Detachment: Tosca in the James Bond Film Quantum of Solace,” 19thCentury Music, 34/3 (Spring 2011): 316-340.
6d17. Yoshida, Shinobu. “Modeling Heroines from Giacomo Puccini’s Operas” PhD diss., University of Michigan,
2011.
6d18. Gilbert, J. “First page preview.” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 10, no. 4 (2005).
• Conferences
Fanciulla 100
6d19. Kellow, Brian. “On the Beat,” Opera News, 75/6 (December 2010) (also in the print edition)
http://www.operanews.com/operanews/templates/content.aspx?id=17734
“Deborah Burton, an assistant professor of music, composition and theory at Boston University, would like more
people to pay attention to Fanciulla. ‘No season goes by without a Tosca, Bohème or Butterfly. But many people have
simply not heard Fanciulla,’ she says. So she decided to do something about it. Working with VITA PALADINO,
director of Boston University’s renowned HOWARD GOTLIEB ARCHIVAL RESEARCH CENTER, Burton has
planned several promising events to coincide with the centennial of the opera’s world premiere at the Met. On
December 3, the day of the dress rehearsal of the Met’s Fanciulla production, there will be a press event at New
York’s Italian Cultural Institute, with a lineup of speakers including WALFREDO TOSCANINI, the conductor’s
grandson, and noted Toscanini scholar HARVEY SACHS. On December 6, Boston University is the site of a
special symposium and exhibition that includes photographs and manuscripts belonging to the Gotlieb Archive,
which houses the complete collections of DOROTHY KIRSTEN and TITO GOBBI, both artists famously
associated with Fanciulla.
‘I always loved Puccini,” Burton says. ‘My University of Michigan dissertation was on Tosca, but I wrote
about it in relationship to an number of his other operas, one of which was Fanciulla. It’s fantastic music—so
sophisticated and so surprising, compared to what you would have expected after Butterfly. Very modernist — he
strikes out in a whole new way, and yet you know it’s Puccini.’
Burton worked on her dissertation in Italy, and she remembers thinking one day, after being submerged in
Fanciulla for weeks, ‘I can’t stand this anymore —I have to take a break from all these singing cowboys. I went to
the local supermarket in a shopping mall, and that day was cowboy day at the mall. Every single person in thee was
Italian, wearing a cowboy outfit. I couldn’t get away from it!’ At the time, Burton faced a good deal of academic
snobbery where Puccini was concerned. ‘It’s gotten much better since I started, back in the ‘90’s,’ she says. She
does recall handing legendary Tosca-hater JOSEPH KERMAN a copy of her finished dissertation. ‘He thanked me,’
Burton remembers, ‘but when he looked at the title, his smile suddenly vanished as if I had given him a dead fish.’”
4
6d20. Metropolitan Opera:
http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/about/education/educatorguides/content.aspx?id=14570
“Giacomo Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West (‘The Girl of the Golden West’), first heard a century ago, is set in the
American West during the California Gold Rush. Peopled with ruthless bandits, rough-talking but goodhearted
miners, a cynical sheriff, and one remarkable female tavern-keeper, it tells a story of love, money, justice, and
forgiveness that is as thrilling as any Western movie, wrapped in an unmistakably Italian score. You could even call
it the world’s first ‘spaghetti Western.’
The www.fanciulla100.org website celebrates the 100th anniversary of Puccini's La Fanciulla del West at the
Metropolitan Opera.”
6d21. New York Times, 5 December, 2010. (also in the print edition)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/arts/music/05fanciulla.html?emc=eta1
[also see complete printout]
“As for the work’s current standing, Deborah Burton, an assistant professor of music at Boston University and an
organizer of a centennial symposium there on Monday as well as a splendid Web site on all things “Fanciulla”
(fanciulla100.org), said: ‘It goes against a century’s worth of cinematic myths about the Old West. Instead of a
strong, silent cowboy rescuing a helpless heroine, we have an emotionally vulnerable bandit rescued by a gun-toting,
poker-playing, independent woman. But that’s actually much truer to history.’”
6d22. Ross, Alex. “The Rest is Noise” Blog:
http://www.instantencore.com/buzz/item.aspx?FeedEntryId=116717
“Next week, Puccini's ever-underrated La fanciulla del West opens at the Met, with Deborah Voigt in the title role.
The Dec. 10 performance falls on the one-hundredth anniversary of the opera's world premiere. Read all about it at
Deborah Burton's absorbing Fanciulla 100 site. Included are film and audio snippets of Puccini in New York.”
6d23. America Oggi, 5 December 2010). http://www.americaoggi.info/2010/12/05/21906-lirica-la-fanciulla-delwest-compie-cento-anni-tavola-rotonda-allistituto-di-cultur
6d24. Consulato Generale d’Italia, New York:
http://www.consnewyork.esteri.it/Consolato_NewYork/Archivio_News/News_150.htm
6d25. I-Italy: http://www.i-italy.org/16267/puccini-s-100-year-old-girl
[also see complete printout]
“On December 10, 1910, the Metropolitan Opera [4] gave its world premiere, a huge event that involved the
greatest operatic names of the day, such as Arturo Toscanini and Enrico Caruso. It marked the first time that an
Italian opera was premiered in America and both the attention of the New York public and the price of tickets
reached unprecedented levels.
One hundred years later, the Met commemorates this event by reprising the opera, in a Giancarlo Del Monaco [5]
production from 1991, starring Marcello Giordani [6], Deborah Voigt [7], and Lucio Gallo [8], and conducted by
Nicola Luisotti [9]. For the occasion, the Italian Cultural Institute [10] organized an event coordinated by Prof.
Deborah Burton [11] of Boston University [12], which included the grandchildren of Toscanini and Puccini,
musicologist Allan Atlas [13], music historian Harvey Sachs, as well as Giordani and Luisotti. Del Monaco himself
and baritone Lucio Gallo were also present, but as spectators. [...]Finally, the reins were handed to the panel, led by
Prof. Burton, the mind and motor behind these centennial celebrations and their relative website,
www.fanciulla100.org [15]. After delighting the audience with a 1910 film of Puccini in America (audio and video
from two different sources) and a tour of the website and its multimedia treasures, she handed the floor to music
historian and Toscanini biographer Harvey Sachs, who moderated a mini-conversation between Walfredo Toscanini
and Simonetta Puccini, the grandchildren of the two operatic titans.”
5
6d.26. Corriere del Ticino (Switzerland) Sachs, Harvey. “In festa per i cento anni della Fanciulla del West,
29 January 2011.
“LETTERA DA NEW YORK — HARVEY SACHS IN FESTA PER I CENTO ANNI DELLA «FANCIULLA
DEL WEST»
L
a sera del 10 dicembre 1910
fu significativa per la storia della musica negli Stati Uniti: per la prima volta un’opera lirica di un celebre compositore europeo ebbe la sua prima
rappresentazione assoluta al di qua dell’Atlantico. Alla Metropolitan Opera House – quella vecchia, ubicata su Broadway all’altezza della 39. strada
e demolita dopo l’inaugurazione nel 1966 del nuovo teatro – La fanciulla del West di Giacomo Puccini fu portata a battesimo dai cantanti Enrico
Caruso, Emmy Destinn e Pasquale Amato. Sul podio c’era Arturo Toscanini, e David Belasco, autore del dramma The Girl of the Golden West
sul quale il libretto era basato, aveva curato la messa in scena. Il teatro, addobbato di bandiere italiane e americane, era gremito all’inverosimile,
nonostante biglietti che costavano fino a 75 dollari (quasi 1.800 franchi di oggi). Le prove erano durate sei settimane, con ottimi risultati, e il
pubblico della prima era entusiasta: le chiamate alla ribalta erano 14 dopo il primo atto, 19 dopo il secondo e innumerevoli alla fine – non solo per
gli artisti, il direttore d’orchestra, il regista e lo stesso Puccini, ma anche per il sovrintendente Giulio Gatti-Casazza, il quale promise che nel futuro
ci sarebbero state molte più «prime» al Met. Puccini, interpellato da un reporter del «New York Times», disse: «Il mio cuore sta battendo come i
contrabbassi nella scena della partita di carte. Sono enormemente contento dell’accoglienza e non avrei potuto avere interpeti migliori». Per il
centenario di questo evento ci sono state diverse iniziative, prima fra tutte – com’era praticamente obbligatoria – una serie di recite della Fanciulla
al Met a partire dal 6 dicembre scorso. Si è ripreso l’allestimento del 1991 di Giancarlo Del Monaco; sul podio c’era il lucchese (come Puccini)
Nicola Luisotti, attuale direttore stabile dell’Opera di San Francisco, e nel cast si annoveravano la bravissima Deborah Voigt nei panni dell’eroina
Minnie, Marcello Giordani nel ruolo di Dick Johnson, alias Ramerrez il bandito, e Lucio Gallo in quello del cattivo sceriffo Jack Rance. La recita
del 10 dicembre, a cent’anni precisi dalla prima, è stata emozionante e alla fine c’è stato un party – presieduto da Peter Gelb, attuale sovrintendente
del Met – per il cast e per un centinaio di invitati, tra i quali si notavano l’architetto Walfredo Toscanini, nipote del maestro, con figlie e nipotini; la
signora Cheryl Green, parente di David Belasco; varie celebrità del mondo dello spettacolo, compresa l’attrice Angela Lansbury; e alcune signore
della New York bene in costumi da «vecchio West» invece dei soliti vestiti da sera. Ma anche nei giorni precedenti c’erano state commemorazioni
del centenario. Il 3 dicembre si è tenuto un convegno all’Istituto italiano di cultura di New York con la partecipazione del maestro Luisotti, del
tenore Giordani, di due rappresentanti del Met e di alcuni studiosi (compreso il sottoscritto) oltre che di Walfredo Toscanini e della dottoressa
Simonetta Puccini, nipote del compositore. E tre giorni dopo si è tenuto un convegno più ampio alla Boston University, con relativa mostra
iconografica al Howard Gotlieb Archival Center.Forza motrice dietro tutto ciò è stata laprofessoressa Deborah Burton della BostonUniversity,
studiosa pucciniana ed ex residente ticinese, proprio nella casa di Vacallo dove il maestro aveva lavorato alla Manon Lescaut. La Burton ha inoltre
creato un sito web (www.fanciulla100.org) ricco di informazioni, interviste e illustrazioni. Vale una visita virtuale da parte di tutti i pucciniani che
non hanno potuto assistere ai begli incontri di New York e di Boston.
[English translation: “LETTER from NEW YORK / HARVEY SACHS / CELEBRATING THE CENTENARY
OF THE «FANCIULLA DEL WEST»
“The evening of December 10, 1910 was significant for the history of music in the United States: for the first time
an opera by a celebrated European composer had its world premiere on the other side of the Atlantic. A the
Metropolitan Opera House— the old one, situated on Broadway and 39th Street and destroyed after the
inauguration in 1966 of the new theater—The Girl of the Golden West by Giacomo Puccini was baptized by singers
Enrico Caruso, Emmy Destinn and Pasquale Amato. On the podium was Arturo Toscanini, and David Belasco,
author of the play The Girl of the Golden West on which the libretto was based, had directed. The theater, decorated
with Italian and American flags, was incredibly filled, despite tickets that cost up to 75 dollars (about 1800 of today’s
Swiss francs). The rehearsals lasted six weeks with optimum results, and the public at the premiere was enthusiastic.
There were 14 curtain calls after the first act, 19 after the second and innumerable ones at the end —not only for
the artists, the conductor, the direct and Puccini, but also for the General Manager Giulio Gatti-Casazza, who
promised many more ‘premieres’ in the Met’s future. Puccini, questioned by a reporter from the New York Times,
said, ‘My heart was beating like the contrabasses in the poker game scene. I am enormously happy about the
reception and I could not have asked for better.’ For the centenary of this event, there were several initiatives, first
among them —as they were practically obligatory— a series of performances of La fanciulla at the Met, beginning
last December 6th. The production from 1991 by Giancarlo Del Monaco was revived; on the podium was the
Lucchese (like Puccini) Nicola Luisotti, current resident conductor of the San Francisco Opera, and in the cast
numbered the wonderful Deborah Voigt as the heroine Minnie, Marcello Giordani in the role of Dick Johnson,
alias Ramerrez the bandit, and Lucio Gallo in that of the evil sherrif Jack Rance. The performance of December
10th, a hundred years precisely after the premiere, was emotional and afterwards there was a celebration —presided
over by Peter Gelb, the current general director of the Met— for the cast and for a hundred or so invited guests,
among whom were Walfredo Toscanini, grandson of the conductor, with his daughters and grandchildren, Cheryl
6
Green, relative of David Belasco; various celebrities of the theater world, including the actress Angela Lansbury,
and some New York women dressed for the “old West” rather than evening clothes. But in the days preceding,
there were also commemorations of the centenary. On December 3rd, a conference was held at the Italian Cultural
Institute of New York with the participation of Maestro Luisotti, tenor Giordani, and two representatives of the
Met, and some academics (including the undersigned), apart from Walfredo Toscanin and Simonetta Puccini,
granddaughter of the composer. And three days after was held a more ample conference at Boston University, with
a related exhibition at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Center. The motivating force behind it all was Professor
Deborah Burton of Boston University, Puccini scholar and ex-resident of Ticino, [where she lived] in the house in
Vacallo where the maestro worked on Manon Lescaut. Burton has also created a website (www.fanciulla100.org), rich
with information, interviews and illustrations. It is worth a virtual visit there for all Puccini-lovers who could not
attend the beautiful encounters in New York and Boston.”]
Tosca 2000
6d27. Weaver. William. ‘“In Tosca, a Touch of Family History.” The New York Times, July 16, 2000.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60A11FA3B5C0C758DDDAE0894D8404482&scp=1&sq=In
%20%27Tosca,%27%20a%20Touch%20of%20Family%20History&st=cse
[also see complete printout]
“As the culminating event of a recent conference of Puccini scholars in Rome, the Puccini Te Deum was scheduled
to be performed again in Sant'Andrea Della Valle, to celebrate the centenary of ''Tosca'' (first performed at the
Rome Opera in January 1900) and, with it, the bicentenary of Marengo. But the Roman Curia decreed that such an
operatic performance in the church would be inappropriate. (Admittedly, the Scarpia-Tosca scene is pretty steamy.)
Fortunately, the program included another Te Deum, properly written for a church; so this second work was indeed
performed and applauded with theatrical enthusiasm. [...] For years, the manuscript of the work, along with sheaves
of other family music, was preserved in Giacomo Puccini's villa at Torre del Lago, on the Tuscan coast. In 1969,
this trove was investigated by the American musician and scholar Herbert Handt; the Te Deum was listed among
Domenico's works in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians entry by Gabriella Biagi Ravenni, and
more recently, another American scholar, Deborah Burton, investigating ''Tosca,'' made the connection between
Domenico's piece and the historic event that inspired Giacomo's great scene. So for the Puccini conference, which
Ms. Burton helped organize, it seemed right to give the grandfather's score its first modern hearing.”
6d28. Phillips-Matz, Mary Jane. Puccini: a biography. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002.
• dissertation
6d29. Baragwanath, Nicholas. “Analytical Approaches to Melody in Selected Arias by
Puccini.” Music Theory Online, 14/2 (June 2008).
http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.08.14.2/mto.08.14.2.baragwanath.html
- “[6] Burton’s analysis (1995) of melody comprised one aspect of a broader search for musico-dramatic coherence
in Tosca. It was underpinned by a more structuralist concept of the Grundmotiv derived from Schoenberg, premised
upon ideas of organicism and unity, and concluded that the “motivic material is interrelated and derived from a
small number of primary motivic cells,” identified as (“x”) the stepwise perfect fourth, (“y”) the stepwise major or
minor third, and (“z”) the perfect fourth plus major or minor second.(8) Her analyses of the main melodies of the
opera point out occurrences and transformations of these basic cells, aligned to considerations of dramatic context.”
- “[7] Girardi’s analyses (1995) likewise tend to assume a fundamentally motivic basis to Puccinian melody in order
to draw attention to numerous similarity relationships, both within individual melodies and throughout entire
operas. With regard to melodic construction his theory is based, like Burton’s, upon the notion of generative
intervals that provide underlying musical coherence. Elphinstone (1996) continued in this vein by postulating a
structural hierarchy of four types of theme operating within the melodic material of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut: “temi
conduttori” (leading themes), “temi occasionali” (occasional themes), “cellule-mosaico” (mosaic cells), and “tessuto
connettivo” (connective tissue).”
7
- Note 1. Among the best such studies are: Deborah Burton’s discussion of “Illustrative musical tools” in “An
Analysis of Puccini’s Tosca: A Heuristic Approach to the Unifying Elements of the Opera” (PhD diss., University of
Michigan, 1995); and Helen M. Greenwald, “Character Distinction and Rhythmic Differentiation in Puccini’s
Operas,” in Gabriella Biagi Ravenni and Carolyn Gianturco, Giacomo Puccini: L’uomo, il musicista, il panorama europeo
(Lucca: LIM, 1997), 495–515.
- Note 8. “Burton, ‘An Analysis,’ 148, 290. Burton’s heuristic approach relies upon an artificial distinction between
‘IM’ (Illustrative Musical) and ‘OM’ (Organisational Musical) tools. This offers much in terms of methodological
clarity, but only at the expense of placing drastic constraints upon what can be investigated as structurally
significant. Her category of ‘organisational’ tools follows a number of previous studies by concentrating primarily
upon issues of motivic construction.”
- Note 21. “Previous applications of Schenker’s theories to Italian opera and Puccini have concentrated primarily on
tonal and motivic structures rather than, as here, melodic patterns. See: [...] Deborah Burton, ‘An Analysis;’ and
Deborah Burton, ‘Tristano, Tosca (e Torchi),’ in Giacomo Puccini: L’uomo, ed. Biagi Ravenni and Gianturco, 127–
146.”
6d30. Budden, Julian. Puccini: His Life and Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
6d31. Chattah, Juan. “Tosca’s Prism: Three Moments in Western Cultural History,” Gamut: Online Journal of the Music Theory
Society of the Mid-Atlantic: 3/1, Article 9. (2010): http://trace.tennessee.edu/gamut/vol3/iss1/9.
6d32. Conati, Marcello. “Guide-Themes and Reminiscences in Tosca.” In Tosca’s prism: three moments of western cultural
history, edited by Deborah Burton, Susan Vandiver Nicassio, Agostino Ziino, 167-182.
6d33. Davis, Andrew. Il Trittico, Turandot, and Puccini’s Late Style. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010).
6d34. Fairtile, Linda. Giacomo Puccini: A Guide to Research (New York: Garland, 1999).
6d35. Greenwald, Helen M. “Giacomo Puccini: A Guide to Research.” Notes, 1999. [review]
6d36. Gillio, Pier Giuseppe. “New Sources for the History of the Libretto,” Tosca’s prism: three moments of western cultural
history, Eds. Deborah Burton, Susan Vandiver Nicassio, Agostino Ziino, 183-220.
6d37. Girardi, Michele. Giacomo Puccini: L’arte internazionale di un musicista italiano. Venice: Marsilio, 1995. English
translation with some revisions: Puccini: his Internatonal Art, trans. Laura Basini, Chicago: Chicago University Press,
2000.
6d38. Greenwald, Helen M. “Recent Puccini Research.” Acta Musicologica 65/1 (Jan. - Jun., 1993), 23-50.
Note 7: “Burton’s work (in progress) seeks to clarify unifying features of Tosca, if, however, somewhat differently
than Atlas, who views the organization of the opera to be grounded in two opposing tritones.”
6d39. Greenwald, Helen M. “Puccini, Il tabarro, and the Dilemma of Operatic
Transposition.” Journal of the American Musicological Society, 51/3 (Autumn, 1998), 521-558.
- p. 522, note 2: “Deborah Burton, in her analysis of Tosca, posits ‘a simpler taxonomy that will, perhaps, resolve
these apparently conflicting analytical constructs’ (“An Analysis of Puccini’s Tosca: A Heuristic Approach to the
Unifying Elements of the Opera” [Ph.D. diss., The University of Michigan, 1995], 3).
- p. 528, note 23. Bernard Shaw, Music in London, 1890-94, 3 vols. (1932; reprint, London: Constable, 1950), 3:219.
Burton discusses Wagner’s thematic influence on Tosca in “Analysis of Puccini’s Tosca,” and sp. chap. 3, pp. 146-80,
and the section entitled “Homages to Wagner,” 2 39-43, in which she identifies further ‘oltralpica’ borrowings.”
- p. 557, note 68. “The letter is housed in the copialettere in the Ricordi archive in Milan. I wish to thank Deborah
Burton for pointing it out to me.”
6d40. Nicassio, Susan V. Tosca’s Rome (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
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6d41. Phillips-Matz, Mary Jane. Puccini: a biography. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002.
6d42. Guy A Marco, Opera: a research and information guide, 2nd ed. (New York: Garland, 2001).
6d43. Wilson, Alexandra. “Tosca’s Rome: The Play and the Opera in Historical Perspective by Susan
Vandiver Nicassio.” Music & Letters Vol. 82, No. 1 (Feb., 2001), 131-133. [review].
“What [Nicassio] terms her ‘analysis’ consists of simply presenting the musical themes associated with the principal
characters, and even here she has drawn her readings from the well-worn writings of Mosco Carner, Charles
Osborne and the like (with more recent insights by Deborah Burton and Roger Parker).”
6d44. Ya-Hui Cheng, “The harmonic representation of the feminine in Puccini” (Ph.D. diss, Florida State
University, 2008): 13-15.
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